We take our hands for granted

ITHINK it’s been conclusively proved by now that at least half the diseases in the world are caused by dirty hands. We take our hands for granted, hardly noticing them as they wipe the cat poo from the floor or spread peanut butter on our breakfast toast. Now we are informed regularly that we’re actually spreading cat poo on our toast because those clever little germs have hopped from one hand to the other. Visit any hospital and you will see notices in every washroom telling us that hand washing prevents the spread of germs.

In addition you’ll find handy waterless germicide dispensers attached to every wall.

This puzzles me a little. I can’t help wondering what happens to all those germs on my hands once I hold them under the germicide dispenser.

Okay, obviously the germs die because “germicide” means germ killer. But they must surely still be there on my hands as before, but now dead.

The question I ask myself is why it should be regarded as a good thing to go about my daily tasks carrying a handful of dead germs?

I don’t think we actually think about these things enough. We simply hold our hands under the dispenser, receive a squirt of something and then walk away feeling de-bugged.

Are we? There’s a similar ongoing argument about the relative benefits of bathing or showering. I’m a bathing person, personally.

I love the luxurious feeling of lying in hot water, soaking away the dirt and tiredness of a hard day (I haven’t done that for years).

My showering friends, however, consider this rather disgusting behaviour.

“You wash off the dirt and germs from your body, creating a solution of warm muck, then you actually lie in it.”

They say it’s far more hygienic to flush away the germs in a shower and then send them down the drainage system to infect poor folk down below.

I was fortunate to have grown up in an age when we accepted germs as a normal part of life.

I was also a farm kid, so I was usually barefoot and walking though the sort of mucky stuff I certainly wouldn’t allow indoors today.

My many childhood pets included a pig called Penelope, an owl called Horace and a donkey called Tony, who was eventually banished from the farm when he started biting sheep.

I must have shared an interesting range of germs and parasites with each of them.

In all my growing years I can’t remember ever having been sick, even though we didn’t have a single germicide dispenser within 40km of the farm.

I was often bandaged, though. Cuts and scrapes were part of growing up.

Maybe the bottom layer of germs protected me from infection from subsequent layers.

Last Laugh

Little Jimmy was asked to say grace at the start of the meal, so he closed his eyes and said: “Thank you God for the meat and potatoes we are about to eat.”

Then he looked up at his mother and said, “I won’t thank Him for the broccoli because he’ll know I’m lying.”